Gen. Shelton warns against long-term U.S. deployments
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, January 25, 2000
WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has
warned against long-term deployment of U.S. troops abroad as White House
officials continue to review plans to send peacekeeping forces to the Golan
Heights as part of any Israeli-Syrian treaty.
Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the joint chiefs, did not
mention the Golan Heights during his speech last week at Harvard University.
But it was his clearest warning against the prospect of renewed U.S.
military commitments that could endanger American troops abroad or reduce
the Pentagon's concept to be able to fight a two-front war.
"The military makes a great hammer in America's foreign policy toolbox,
but not every problem that we face is a nail," Shelton said on Wednesday.
The assertion came two days before a poll commissioned by the
Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs reported
that most Americans oppose the sending of U.S. troops to the Golan Heights
to monitor a peace treaty.
Shelton listed what he termed as the principles for the deployment of
U.S. troops abroad. He said such a mission should be brief and present
minimal danger to American soldiers.
The U.S. military chief cited Rwanda and Turkey in which American troops
were sent to deal with disasters or humanitarian relief efforts. "They
should be designed to give the affected country the opportunity to restore
its own basic services," he said. "At the same time, we have got to ensure
these efforts should not jeopardize our ability to respond to direct threats
to our national security in other regions of the world."
The United States maintains several hundred troops in the Sinai desert
to monitor the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But the United
States has not sent soldiers to the Levant since 1983, when some 250
soldiers were killed in attacks by pro-Syrian elements around Beirut.
Pentagon sources said many officials dealing with the Middle East both
in the Defense Department and the military are wary of the prospect of
thousands of U.S. troops being deployed in Syria or Lebanon. They pointed to
the 1998 anti-U.S. riots in Damascus in which Syrian forces failed to stop
the demonstrators from storming the U.S. Embassy.
"There is very little trust of Syria here," a Pentagon official said.
"Many of us approach the prospect of Syria being transformed into a
pro-Western nation with great skepticism."
Shelton stressed the importance of the support by the American people to
send troops abroad. He said each decision must withstand what he called the
"Dover test," a reference to the Delaware air force base that receives the
bodies of service members killed in action.
"We have to ask the question, 'Is the American public prepared for the
sight of our most precious resources coming home in flag-draped caskets into
Dover Air Force Base?'" Shelton said.
The U.S. military chief stressed that he did not oppose the use of
American military force or contribution to an international peacekeeping
effort. But he warned that in some places of the world the U.S. soldiers
might find themselves lodged among an array of hostile forces.
"We may find out that sorting out the good guys from the bad is not as
easy as it seems," he said. "We may find that getting in is much easier than
getting out. I think that these are the types of issues that we should
confront up front before making a decision on whether to commit our military
forces."